Seeing red and wanting it to be blue: San Rafael woman takes on GOP strongholds in California

Just 120 miles from Marin, a little more than a two-hour drive, lies Sutter County - the political mirror image of Marin County - where Republicans rule, and Democrats dream of someday winning an election.

"Some of the worst offenses of the religious right and the most partisan of the Republican wild-eyed ideologues happen two hours from here," said Mayme Hubert of San Rafael.

In the wake of John Kerry's defeat in November 2004, Hubert founded Take Back Red California, a political organization designed to pry loose the Republican Party's death grip on Sutter and other inland counties of California.

The inspiration for the organization was simple, Hubert says. Because Marin and other Bay Area counties are Democratic strongholds with more money and volunteers than they need, why not share the wealth with their country cousins who are swamped in a red, GOP tide?

In Sutter County, nearly 50 percent of the county's 38,786 registered voters are Republicans, compared with 32 percent who are Democrats. In Marin, 51 percent of the registered voters are Democrats and only about 23 percent are Republicans.

Hubert was one of more than 25 Bay Area Democrats who traveled to Iowa in 2004 to try to help Howard Dean win the support of the Democratic caucuses in his bid for the presidential nomination. Iowans did not take well to the Deaniacs. Dean lost by 20 percentage points to John Kerry.

"The Iowa thing was such a learning experience - learning how not to do it, this parachute-in idea," Hubert said. Take Back Red California, which is made up of activists from Marin County and the East Bay, asks - it doesn't tell - red county Democrats what they need.

"The locals decide," Hubert said. "We do what they say needs to be done."

One of the first people Hubert consulted was Ed Fleming, then chairman of the state Democratic Party's rural caucus. For Fleming, Hubert's call came as a surprise.

Fleming lives in Marysville - the county seat of Yuba County and the sister city of Yuba City, the county seat of Sutter County. Yuba and Sutter counties share a number of public agencies and have much in common. Fleming, who helped register black voters in Mississippi in 1964, moved there after living most of his life in Santa Clara County. He had given up hope long ago of receiving assistance from Democrats outside of Yuba County.

"I found out that the Democratic Party basically didn't make any effort in the rural areas," said Fleming, chairman of Yuba County's Democratic Central Committee.

In Yuba County, like Sutter County, Republicans control just about everything, Fleming says.

"They control the newspapers. They control practically all of the local government. They control the radio stations, Rotary and Kiwanis. So, the Democrats have no real way to mount a voice, and the statewide party just doesn't seem to care," Fleming said.

The Republican Party, on the other hand, gets involved even in low-level nonpartisan elections such as supervisorial races, Fleming said.

"They spend thousands of dollars, and they'll do it against their own people if they get out of line," he said.

The power exerted by conservative Republicans in Yuba and Sutter counties extends beyond the ballot box, Fleming said. Political opponents' businesses have been boycotted and people's jobs threatened, he said.

Fleming put Hubert in touch with other red California residents. Gabrial Singh, who lives in Sutter County in a small town eight miles north of Yuba City, recounted how his liberal talk radio show on AM station KMYC was canceled in November after both he and the station owner received a flood of death threats.

"They said they were going to shoot me, shoot my family, shoot the radio station owner, and his family - real nice people," Singh said.

Singh said the Church of Glad Tidings, a large evangelical church in Yuba City, played an active role in whipping up opposition to the program and vigorously supports conservative, local Republicans.

A man contacted by phone who identified himself as one of the Church of Glad Tidings' five pastors declined to comment or give his name.

Another red county denizen, Francie Lane, said the Catholic church in her community was distributing Christian Coalition slate cards inside the church until she objected. During the 2004 presidential election, Lane found Spanish-language brochures at the church warning worshippers they would be risking their immortal souls if they voted for John Kerry. Lane recalls being warned at the first local Democratic Club meeting she attended to remove the liberal bumper stickers from her car - unless she wanted her vehicle vandalized.

It is into this Democratic no-man's-land that Marin County members of Take Back Red California are venturing. Hubert and several other Marin residents campaigned door-to-door prior to the June election for Jose Flores, a Yuba County supervisorial candidate, and two candidates for supervisor in El Dorado County.

"I don't think I really knew where Yuba City was," said Susan Rouder of Fairfax, who campaigned for Flores.

Rouder, who taught political science at City College of San Francisco for nearly 30 years, was struck by the fact that there are no Latinos on the Sutter County Board of Supervisors - even though 44 percent of the county's registered voters are Latino.

Flores finished third but he helped force the incumbent, a conservative Republican, into a runoff with a liberal Republican, who has promised to Flores a role in county government if he wins, Fleming said.

In addition to volunteers, Take Back Red California is supplying money and technical expertise. The organization's Web site - www.takebackredcalifornia.org - serves as a matchmaker connecting Bay Area volunteers with red county Democrats in need.

Take Back Red California plans to be much more active in the November election, Hubert said. They are going to focus their efforts on unseating three congressmen - Richard Pombo, R-Tracy; John Doolittle, R-Roseville and Dan Lungren, R-Gold River.

Democrats say Pombo and Doolittle are vulnerable because of their ties to convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Take Back Red California will host a fund-raiser July 15 at the Marinwood Recreation Center for the three Democratic challengers: Bill Durston, Charlie Brown and Jerry McNerney.

There are signs that - at the urging of Democratic Party National Chairman Howard Dean - state Democratic leaders are starting to pay more attention to the red counties. Dean has emphasized the importance of rebuilding the party's grass-roots organization, even in Republican strongholds.

In the past, the Democratic National Committee has concentrated its money in a dozen states that decide elections. Dean's decision to distribute money even to states that are not real battlegrounds has attracted criticism from some Democratic insiders who blame him for risking the party's chances in the November election.

Sam Rodriguez, the political director for the California Democratic Party, said he met with Dean and party leaders from Ohio, New Jersey, Louisiana and Kansas last month to discuss the new strategy.

"For the first time, state parties and the Democratic National Committee are working together to rebuild the party apparatus to be year-round and begin to focus on red counties and train them blue," Rodriguez said.

Hubert said it is hard to understand why counties such as Sutter and Yuba tend to vote Republican given how economically disadvantaged they are.

When the national census was taken in 2000, the median household income in Sutter County was $39,633. Nearly 13 percent of the population was below the poverty line. By comparison, the median household income in Marin at the time was $66,616 and only 7 percent of the population fell below the poverty line. Fifteen percent of the Sutter County population had a bachelor's or higher degree, compared with 51 percent of the Marin population, which had a bachelor's or higher degree.

"These are very poor counties with populations that should be voting Democratic," Fleming said.

Hubert compares this phenomenon with the one detailed in Thomas Frank's book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Frank asserts that Republicans skillfully used cultural wedge issues to convince voters in Midwestern states to vote against their economic interests.

Gun control and gay marriage rights may be winning issues for Democrats in Marin County, but in Sutter and Yuba counties they are big losers, locals say.

"The churches here are using the gay rights issue to say Democrats want to have gay marriages," Lane said. "Most Democrats you talk to around here - that's not their priority."

"Me personally, I don't care," Fleming said. "But if you come to this part of the world and put that gay rights thing on the agenda, it will go down about six to one."

The same goes for gun control.

"Democrats here are as in favor of guns as Republicans," Lane said.

"I'm a union guy and practically all my brothers here hunt," Fleming said. "The bottom line is they all carry guns.

"We know a lot about this kind of place, and our party knows nothing."

A special report by the Field Poll in February found a "widening chasm" in the voting preferences of Californians in the state's 20 coastal counties, in which 71 percent of the population resides, and the 38 inland counties, where the remaining 29 percent of the population lives.

The report noted that while 59 percent of coastal Californians voted for John Kerry in 2004, 57 percent of inland Californians voted for George Bush.

The report said that coastal Californians tend to be liberal, college educated, have high household incomes and many have never married. The poll said inland Californians are conservative, Protestant (especially born-again Christians), married, lack college degrees and have lower incomes.

What should concern Democratic party leaders is that these inland counties are growing rapidly, Fleming said.

"They're slowly but surely losing votes because people are moving from the western part of California to the eastern half by the droves," he said, "and they're being gobbled up in this Republican stronghold."